


the art of distraction

by beeclaws



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Burns, Canon Compliant, Eiffel POV, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Medical Procedures, Season/Series 02, with no guarantee of medical accuracy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-17 01:05:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14177235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beeclaws/pseuds/beeclaws
Summary: Sometimes the Hephaestus is slightly more on fire than most people would consider ideal.In the aftermath of one of those times, Minkowski undergoes a painful medical procedure with help from Eiffel, Communications Officer now moonlighting as an agony-distracter.





	the art of distraction

**Author's Note:**

> Set during late season 2.

“I will tell you again,” Hilbert says. “This is proper treatment for burns of this severity. It will still be proper treatment after you express disapproval for the fifth time, but perhaps you had better try six, seven and eight, just to be sure.”

“And I will tell you again,” Loveless answers, her knuckles white where she’s gripping the handrail. “I am not letting you torture anyone on this ship until I make damn sure it’s warranted.”

Hilbert says something back, but Eiffel thinks he’s heard enough. He pushes off toward where Minkowski is lying tethered to the exam table, a feat which he thought he accomplished pretty silently, but naturally her eyes still open as soon as he’s close. He adds “creepy plant-monster-style extrasensory abilities” to his list of reasons to fear her.

“Commander.”

“Eiffel.”

Eiffel tries to pretend that the exhaustion in her voice is just exasperation, but it doesn’t quite work when he’s just got a good look at the burn stretching across the back of her shoulder. The very edges are just unnaturally red, almost like a sunburn, but the parts he tries extra-hard not to process go from blistered to deep bruise-purple.

“You want me to get in on this yelling for you?” he asks brightly. “Maaaybe tell them to take it outside and, I don’t know, not have their little screaming match in front of the actual patient?”

“I can do my own yelling, Eiffel,” she says, eyes falling closed again.

“Sure,” he says. “I am really, unbelievably aware of that. I might go do a little of my own yelling, anyway.”

“Okay,” she says.

“Okay.” He swivels around. “Hey, idiots!” To his surprise, they actually stop. “Yeah, you idiots. Now, admittedly I haven’t taken a look at a medical textbook in, oh, ever? But I’m _pretty sure_ the treatment for ‘burns of this severity’” he says, briefly dropping into his truly world-class (in his opinion) Hilbert impression, “isn’t having to listen to endless, screaming arguments about whether or not we need to pull a bunch of your skin off!” In the following silence he immediately regrets his phrasing, but resists the urge to turn back and check on Minkowski. “A screaming argument which I’ve now joined, so, you know, we all suck,” he adds, mostly running out steam.

Both of them are still glaring at the world in general, but Hilbert mutters “Perhaps it would be best to continue this discussion elsewhere.”

“No need,” Minkowski says, moving to sit up while clearly trying not to move her entire right side. “Do the debridement.”

“Minkowski—” Lovelace starts.

“I don’t like it any more than you do,” she says, wincing. “But Hilbert is the doctor here, and we’ve had to trust him to treat crew members during emergencies before.”

Ah yes, the coughing-up-blood fest of day whatever-the-hell-it-was. Eiffel remembers it fondly, and blurrily. He doesn’t point out that it was entirely Hilbert’s fault that that he’d even needed treatment.

“You left out the part where we only _needed_ him to because he _caused_ the emergency in the first place,” Lovelace says. A weird day when Eiffel is the more restrained conversationalist.

“Look, we can argue about this all day,” Minkowski says. It seems to be costing her a lot just to talk, and it makes Eiffel weirdly twitchy, though he doesn’t know exactly what his hands seem to want to do—physically reach out and remove the situation? “But this isn’t getting any better, and Hilbert is the only one with an actual plan, or the knowledge needed to make one.”

Lovelace sighs. Eiffel makes the mistake of looking at Minkowski’s burned shoulder again. There’s so much texture and variation to it, just like…hills and valleys of sheer awful. He doesn’t know how to deal, and he’s not even the person hurt. But he guesses that isn’t exactly new.

“I will stay and supervise—” Lovelace starts, but Hilbert is already cutting in.

“And your extensive medical training will allow you to determine whether I am behaving satisfactorily?”

“Eiffel will stay,” Minkowski cut in. “Captain, you go and start the repairs.”

Eiffel raises an eyebrow and attempts an aside with Minkowski. “Not that I’m saying no, but are you sure I’m the best man for the job here?”

“Normally, no,” Minkowski says, and he feels an instinctive urge to argue even though he’s the one who said it first. “There are a lot of moving parts here. Hera’s got enough to keep track of with the Hephaestus in this kind of shape. Someone competent needs to be out there starting repairs; that has to be me or Lovelace, so Lovelace, and someone needs to stay in here so that she’ll agree to go out there.”

She’s gesturing a little with her good hand, still holding herself very still otherwise, and it’s that more than the explanation that makes Eiffel really not want to add to her list of problems right now.

“You got it, Commander. One supervisor of terrifying medical procedures coming up.”

Turning back to the rest of the room, he catches the tail end of an intense stare-off between Hilbert and Lovelace.

Lovelace looks away so deliberately that it doesn’t really seem like she lost, a skill which Eiffel really wishes he had. “One repair drone coming up,” she says icily. Just before she gets to the door, she turns to Minkowski again with a little less fire in her eyes. “Good luck, Commander,” she says, like they’re about to go off for a mission, and heads out of the room.

Some of the tension leaves the room with her, which leaves Eiffel newly aware of what he is about to witness. “Okay, let’s get this show on the road!” he says, as Hilbert starts grabbing things from a drawer of instruments Eiffel really doesn’t want to think about. “What role am I actually playing in this? Whatever the medical equivalent is of a plucky sidekick/lovely assistant? Do you need me to be that?”

“Words cannot express how much I do not need that,” Hilbert says, not looking up.

Since Hilbert is still fussing with equipment and Minkowski has gone back to lying down with her eyes closed, Eiffel tries to occupy himself by drumming his fingers on the side of the exam table. After a few seconds of this, Minkowski slowly opens one eye like she’s fucking Smaug noticing a disturbance in her treasure hoard. He stops tapping.

Hilbert comes over with a fairly terrifying needle in his hand. “Painkiller,” he says, taking Minkowski’s uninjured arm. “Will likely only be partially effective,” he adds. Eiffel wonders if that’s Hilbert’s version of sympathy. Minkowski only nods grimly.

Eiffel feels like the least competent person in the room, and resists the urge to ask Minkowski again if she’s _really_ sure she wouldn’t rather he go and do a solid C- job fixing a spaceship.

“Not to harp on this,” he says, as Hilbert finishes the injection, “but do I have a purpose here? Do either of you have one you don’t need lying around somewhere, want to dust it off—”

“Eiffel,” Minkowski cuts in. “As I said less than two minutes ago, I just need you here so Lovelace doesn’t insist on staying. You’re currently fulfilling your purpose just by being in the room – take it as a rare moment of productivity.”

“Actually,” Hilbert adds. “He may have some use as distraction.”

“Like, create a distraction while you start the heist kind of distraction?” Eiffel asks.

“Like talk to patient to distract from agony,” Hilbert replies, expressionless.

Eiffel winces. Minkowski doesn’t. “Maybe you are the right person for the job after all,” she says evenly. “If the job was to shut up, then we’d really be screwed.”

“I’m going to choose not to take that personally, since you’re all wounded and fragile right now,” Eiffel says, the picture of charity. Minkowski looks like she’s thinking up ways to do him harm without having to move.

“Mmm,” she says. “And I’m sure I won’t remember any of these comments once I’m healed up. I’m forgetful like that.”

She turns onto her front and Hilbert sets up by her right shoulder. Eiffel tries to somewhat-subtly drift into a position where he’s still in Minkowski’s eyeline but can’t really see whatever Hilbert’s about to do.

“As much as possible, try to remain still,” Hilbert says. There’s a glint of some silver instrument that Eiffel immediately averts his gaze from, and then Minkowski lets out a long, slow breath.

“So,” Eiffel says, desperately trying to think of a topic. What does Minkowski like? “Does Pryce and Carter’s Big Book of Creepy say anything about burns?”

Minkowski tilts her head to the side. He imagines her scanning a huge database of vaguely-threatening bureaucracy. “There’s something about burning off extra fuel reserves on the return trip to Earth?” she offers. “Also, tips 772-779 are pretty much all about what happens if you go over the red line, so—”

“Burning kind of implied, right,” Eiffel finishes, grimacing.

“You know,” Hera says, joining the conversation. “The general principle of a distraction is to talk about something other than the thing you’re supposed to be distracting from.”

“How are the repairs coming on?” Minkowski asks.

“See, like that!” Hera says. “She’s doing it better than you are and she’s supposed to be the distractee here.”

“Hera,” Minkowski says.

“Right. Sorry, Commander,” Hera says. “The fried wiring is definitely looking like a two-person job, so I managed to talk Lovelace down from trying to fix it herself. She’s working on the collapsed panelling to get access to the wiring we _haven’t_ burned to a crisp. I should probably focus on guiding her through that and the course corrections, actually.”

“Sure,” Eiffel says. “Just breeze in, criticise my performance and leave.”

“Well, if that’s what you want!” Hera says brightly, and in his mind’s eye he sees her breeze back out of the room.

There are a few beats of quiet where Eiffel picks up on an awful tearing sound from Hilbert’s side of the table, and the rhythm of Minkowski’s breath – still even, but only because she seems to be putting all her focus into it. It seems like a moment for a distraction, and if only recognising that were Eiffel’s sole job, he’d be all set.

“So,” he starts. “You think Lovelace just needs more hands to fix that wiring, or more engineer-trained, backed-by-actual-knowledge hands? You can guess which ones I have in stock.”

Minkowski raises her eyebrows slightly. “Are you trying to steal Hera’s distraction?”

“No,” he protests. “It’s a team effort now. We’re co-authors.”

Hera coughs over the speakers, and in the middle Eiffel is pretty sure he hears the word “plagiarist.”

“Hush, you.”

Silence falls again. Eiffel tries to think of the things that used to make him feel better when he was sick, and quickly has a helpful list of things they do not have access to in space. He tries very hard not to think of the things that used to make Anne feel better when she was sick, and only mostly succeeds. Great, now he’s the one that needs a distraction.

Minkowski could still be mistaken from someone just concentrating if it wasn’t for how still she was holding herself, like that would keep the pain from touching her.

“So, Hilbert,” Eiffel says, aware he is scraping the bottom of the barrel. “You got any premium distractions for us?”

Hilbert considers for a moment. “Was wondering if enough supplies remain to synthesise solution with both antibiotic and pain-relieving properties.”

“Cool,” Eiffel says. “So not interesting or a distraction from the topic at hand. That’s really stellar, Doc.”

“You do distraction, I do medicine,” Hilbert mutters. “Unless you would like to switch?”

Eiffel doesn’t get a chance to answer, because whatever Hilbert is doing finally makes Minkowski let out a noise somewhere between a groan and a yell.

“Hey, shit,” he says softly, coming a little closer with no actual plan in mind. There’s a definite pallor to her now, and she leans forward a little more and screws her eyes shut. Eiffel goes with his first instinct and takes her hand in his. “Crush it all you want,” he offers. “Not like I do any actual work around here anyway, right?”

She lets out a pained breath that could almost be a laugh and squeezes his hand with a surprising lack of crushing force. She groans again and it mostly makes Eiffel aware how hard she seems to be trying to stay quiet, as though showing weakness might actually be the worst part of this situation for her.

To distract himself from how shitty it is that he might be making this whole thing worse just by witnessing it, Eiffel silently debates the merits of yelling at Hilbert. On the one hand, he almost certainly wouldn’t listen, but on the other hand, he had tried to murder Minkowski that one time, so maybe she’d enjoy it anyway.

“Squeeze twice if you want me to punch Hilbert,” Eiffel faux-whispers.

Hilbert grumbles vaguely but seems to be concentrating too hard to think of a retort, the coward. Minkowski doesn’t squeeze, seemingly focused on getting her breathing under control.

“Do you want to punch me?” Eiffel offers, running out of ideas.

Minkowski gives a very strained smile. “For once, no,” she manages.

Eiffel has no idea what to do with that. His fingers brush over a tiny scar on her knuckles.

“Do you…want to come up with a reason why it’s my fault you got hurt?”

Her hand squeezes tighter. “No one’s fault, this time. Just—” She has to pause to take a breath, her free hand stretching wide then curling up tight again. “Just the Hephaestus being the Hephaestus.”

“Poor old girl,” Eiffel agrees. “Can’t go a week without some part of her falling off and making for sunnier climbs.” He pauses. “You know, if we’re blaming the Hephaestus, then technically this is Cutter’s fault.”

Minkowski nods. “I’ll add it to the list.”

“Commander Minkowski’s list of grievances with our corporate overlords?” Eiffel says, almost wistful. “Is it shorter or longer than your list of grievances with me and my work ethic?”

“What work ethic?” she says immediately, even while actively struggling for breath. Oh, Minkowski. She makes eye contact over their clasped hands, the tiniest hint of a smile at the corner of her mouth. “Goddard’s is more egregious. Yours is way, way longer.”

“Wouldn’t have it any other way,” he says. The moment holds until there’s an even worse tearing sound followed by a wordless cry of pain from Minkowski. She collapses forward, letting go of his hand and resting her head against her forearms, and oh, hey, Eiffel now has a great view of burned skin, both attached and not attached to her shoulder.

“ _Yikes_ —I mean, yeah, okay, this seems like a great time for a break,” he says, mostly to Hilbert.

“No,” Minkowski murmurs. It’s the least composed he’s ever heard her sound, mutiny and Empty Man sagas included. He thinks she might be crying, and the world has never made less sense. After a few shaky breaths, she carries on: “Just hurry.”

Hilbert grunts an acknowledgement. Minkowski’s fists are clenched so hard that her knuckles have turned white. Eiffel cannot even imagine being this person, who would take every moment of pain at once just to get to the other side of it faster. Holding her hand had at least made him feel like he was doing something, so after a moment’s pause he moves a little closer and rests a hand on her uninjured shoulder.

“See, this is why you’re in charge,” he says quietly, his voice mostly steady. “If this was me, I’d have called this whole thing off like four times already.” She’s letting out a small pained noise on every breath now, ones Eiffel can only hear because he’s so close.

“No, realistically, if this was me we’d have never even gotten to this point,” he adds. “I’d have staged a whole series of escapades that ended with me passing out from infection in a supply closet somewhere, probably clutching a homemade shiv.”

There’s a moment of silence where normally she’d make some kind of retort, and the loss of that rhythm cuts away at his remaining certainty.

“I guess that’s part of why we need you,” he says softly, trying to mentally cut Hilbert and his nightmare-operation out of the room. “You’ve got enough courage for all of us.”

He’s not sure if he’s imagining it, but he thinks her breathing slows a little. A few moments later, there’s a clink as Hilbert puts his instrument down. Eiffel looks up to find him holding the weird mesh-like bandages you apparently use for burns.

“That is all for debridement,” Hilbert says. “Need to redress wound.”

Eiffel sighs with relief and runs a hand through his hair. If all days went like this one, he figures he’d have a total breakdown about four days in.

He hovers uncertainly for a moment as Hilbert goes to work with the bandages. Minkowski’s breathing has slowed down even more but she’s showing no signs of moving, and he’s not sure where the line between ‘comfort’ and ‘uncomfortable violation of boundaries and norms’ lies. In the end, he pats her shoulder once more and backs up a little.

Only when Hilbert moves away does Minkowski emerge, straightening up just enough to meet his eyes. Over the years, Eiffel has seen her in various stages of deep exhaustion, but never this close up. She looks…well, she looks like someone who just had a bunch of her skin pulled off, complete with a light sheen of sweat across her forehead and a look in her eyes like relief is just one more thing making her want to sleep for the next century or so.

All of Eiffel’s words are gone. He finds himself thinking that if they were still holding hands he could just squeeze, no words needed. It was easy to be softer, to say things they’d never normally say to each other, when she was literally non-verbal with pain. Now they’re back in some kind of strange in-between, and Eiffel’s no good with those.

Minkowski breaks away first, moving to sit up and murmuring a thank you he almost misses when she’s already half turned away. It occurs to Eiffel that she probably doesn’t have a roadmap for this situation either.

“Any time,” he says, just as quietly. She turns back to him and raises an eyebrow. “Yeah, not that we should do this again – soon or, you know, ever. From now on let’s have all the fires be in rooms we aren’t in, or no fires at all if we’re feeling ambitious.”

“It’s good to have realistic goals,” Minkowski says, stretching. Her stringing a six-word sentence together has never been more reassuring. He can’t quite read her expression, but something in her posture makes him think she’s mentally putting her armour back on. Eiffel thinks that’s a fair enough impulse, and one he’d likely mimic if he had anything approaching armour.

“Okay,” Minkowski says, like something had just been decided. “I’m going to go help Lovelace.”

“Whoa, whoa,” Eiffel says. “What were we just saying about realistic goals?”

She spares him a frown. “What’s your point?”

“I have all kinds of points. The main one being that last I checked, Hilbert wasn’t God, and so you still have a recent, infected, medium to well-done shoulder.”

“What was the last half hour about if not dealing with that?” Minkowski says, with the air of someone low on patience.

“As little as I enjoy agreeing with Eiffel,” Hilbert says, which, rude, “debridement _will_ help with treatment of infection. Future tense.”

“Thank you for your assistance, doctor,” Minkowski says, her voice very final. “That will be all.” She pushes off the table and heads for the door. Eiffel follows.

“Eiffel,” she says once they’re outside, not turning to look at him. “Are you coming to help?”

“Depends on what you mean by helping,” he says, doing his best to keep pace with her. “As much as I love seeing Hilbert get told off, it sounds like he’s maybe kind of right here?”

Minkowski is pulling herself along seemingly without much trouble, but Eiffel assumes nothing when it comes to her ability to pretend things are fine when they really, truly aren’t.

“I’m at least going to go and check on Lovelace.”

“In that case, memo from Communications!” Eiffel says brightly. “We have these incredible devices now that let you communicate without needing to physically go anywhere.”

“Oh, good,” Minkowski says, expressionless. “I was hoping your skillset extended to sarcastic memos.”

“Okay, less sarcastically then,” he says, moving in front of her so that she has to stop. “The most disaster-y thing that happened today happened to you, and the solution to that seems pretty obvious.” Minkowski sighs. Eiffel carries on. “C’mon, what’s the concern here? Worried we'll only respect the authority of those who are immune to fire damage?”

She blinks in a way he thinks is supposed to seem annoyed, but it mostly just seems like she’s having trouble keeping her eyes open.

“You know,” she says, “the more you talk, the more I feel like I do need a nap after all.”

“That’s the spirit!” he says, pointedly turning left instead of right, towards the crew quarters rather than engineering. “I am so not above exhausting you into making good choices.”

Minkowski shakes her head. “I think nurse duty is the only task you've ever been given that you've tried to go above and beyond on.”

“I like to think of myself more as a motivational speaker,” Eiffel says. “Follow your dreams, live your truth, take your nap.”

“Tone down the smugness or I’m not going to rest until every inch of wiring is replaced,” she says, grim and content all at once. He doesn’t know if he should be offended at how much she seems to relish out-stubborning him.

“Can do,” he says. They arrive at her door and he feels the awkwardness creep up again. “I'll have Hera wake you up if anything falls off the ship, or if there are any more fires we need you bravely stick more body parts in.”

She pauses to give him a look of confusion mixed with mild disapproval. “You have very strange methods of reassuring people,” she says, moving into the room.

Eiffel shrugs. “I only take complaints in writing.”

She hovers in the doorway for a second, looking in his direction but not quite meeting his eyes. He thinks she’s maybe going to try to thank him again, but after a beat she just nods and shuts the door.

Eiffel sighs. Maybe tomorrow they can go back to pretending that she’s indestructible and that he’s not responsible for anyone’s wellbeing, debatably even his own. This whole experience almost makes him think fondly of the time he almost drowned outside the hull, and Minkowski came jet-packing to his rescue. That was less of a violation of the natural order of things, even if it required him to lose his eyesight, use of his right arm, and the ability to breathe. He guesses fire doesn’t care who it burns, and what existing character dynamics it screws up by doing so.

“Eiffel,” Hera says, cutting into his reverie. “You’re…staring at Minkowski’s door.”

“Yes,” Eiffel says. “That seems to be what’s happening.”

There is a moment of pointed silence. “Would you like to come on down to engineering and do something a little more useful?”

“Sure thing, Hera,” he says, setting off. “Is she actually resting?” he asks a moment later.

“She is actually resting.” There’s something close to a smile in Hera’s voice. “And for what it’s worth, I think you did a pretty good job today.”

“Thanks, Hera,” he says, and because he has no idea how to quit when he’s ahead: “Am I a better distracter than Communications Officer?”

“I feel like neither answer is going to make you very happy.”

**Author's Note:**

> I initially put this in the category of ‘too self-indulgent to share with other humans’, but honestly what else is fic for.
> 
> I’m hoping posting it gives me some momentum to share more things – Wolf 359 got me doing quite a bit of writing but not a lot of finishing and posting said writing.
> 
> Comments would be very much appreciated!


End file.
